Rescape
by Andi Mack
Summary: Post MGS4. Hal is adjusting to life as a university professor but without an important friendship. But when strange things begin to happen, is it simply stress or does it have something to do with oddball student, Milea Stewart? Dedicated to SSS!
1. Chapter 1

_Early premiere! This wasn't supposed to release until Monday (October 27) but I just found out we're moving (again) so, I need to start posting this before I don't have the time._

_**NOTE: Sorry, had to repost due to some errors I didn't see before! For everyone with alerts, please realert this story! I promise it's going to be a good one!**_

_This entire project is dedicated to my good friend and fellow writer **Solid Snake's Soldier. **Our styles may be different, but together, we create the most beautiful and perfect roller coaster ride of emotion and disaster. She's a ray of hope and happiness, lit through the eyes of child like souls and empowered by the purity, love and goodness of the heart, even in the midst of the engulfing, maddening darkness...and I'm usually that engulfing, maddening darkness. Her writing is every bit as epic and magical as Disney once was in their time of "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Little Mermaid" and I'm extremely proud to get to call her my friend. This one is for you!_

* * *

"Your papers are due on Monday."

He knew that would make all thirty-eight of his students moan in collective disappointment and he tried not to smile once they did. "Well, I could see how that might ruin the weekend for a couple of you" he teased, pointing glances to a few of the students he was referring to. "You had two weeks for these papers, guys. You should be looking over them at the very least and not starting on them."

He looked over the top of his glasses to the back of the room to make sure the figure in the back was still in place and waiting against the wall.

"Alright guys. I want to read masterpieces on Monday. You're dismissed."

Hal Emmerich watched his entire class file out of the lecture hall via the double doors before the body in back decided to move forward to him.

"Professor Emmerich?"

He caught Dave's steel blue stare of amusement moving closer.

"You sound like you don't like it."

"That's not true. It's just...different."

"It sounds a little odd to me, too," Hal admitted, "You'd think I'd be used to it by now. I've been here for nearly a semester. I'm not even the newbie professor anymore. I'm really happy you stuck around for the entire class although it's usually a little more interesting than it was today."

"I wouldn't miss the opportunity to see you exert your authority over a bunch of university students."

Hal laughed. "I'm not teaching Dictatorship 101 here, Dave. It's Technological Solutions. There's not much chance of a power trip in expressing the need to solve the world's increasing energy crisis using advancements in technology rather than natural resources."

"I bet you put it just like that in your syllabus, didn't you?"

"Mock me if you want but, I feel like I'm making a difference. And that may sound stupid or incredibly pretentious to you but I feel like I belong here doing this. I'm truly happy for the first time in a long time."

"I'm proud of you, Hal."

Hal stopped shuffling papers in order to digest the words cautiously, as if he expected the feeling behind them to disappear in one of his friend's 'just kidding' smirks.

He finally smiled. "Thanks, Dave. That means a lot to me." Hal tossed a sudden annoyed look up at the ceiling and then down at his podium, still covered in his students' work. "Damnit!"

"What is it?"

"They still haven't fixed that leak." He shook and brushed at the papers as if it would take the form of powder if he did it enough. When he checked their state, he let out a small slit of a grin across his thin lips that Dave immediately noticed.

"What's that look for?"

"Looks like Milea Stewart's paper suffered the most. I'll have ask her to print me off another copy, using better ink perhaps."

"You don't sound too torn up about ruining a potential masterpiece."

"Masterpiece?" he repeated with a chuckle, "Well, maybe if you like abstract art. Ms. Stewart's work is entertaining if nothing else." He looked up at the clock on the wall, "Shoot. I'm going to be late to the school. We can finish this conversation on the way there if you like. I know Sunny would be really happy to see you."

Dave stuffed his hands in his pockets and shook his head, "No, that's okay. I'm going to get going."

"Okay. Well, drop by the house sometime. Sunny—we both—really miss having you around." Hal didn't regain the ability to talk and say the one thing that had been beating the back of his throat since he had seen Dave enter the classroom until he was nearly out of it again.

"I don't hate you." Dave paused, freezing one side of the door open with his arm. "I just thought you should know that."

Hal waited for the door's hinged return to click shut before he moved anymore papers around and stuffed them into his black messenger bag. He could count all the ways Dave made him remember that he wasn't truly happy at all later. At that moment, he had a little girl to pick up.

* * *

Hal watched the endless stream of kids pour from the building and separate at the sidewalk into awaiting parked cars. He smiled when he spotted the one little girl running the path that lead straight to him, toting behind her something by hand that turned out to be another little girl upon closer inspection.

She ran to the driver's side to lean in a kiss on Hal's cheek.

"Hi, Uncle Hal," she said, syruper than she normally did without a request looming as her next thought.

"I don't suppose your friend here had anything to do with that kiss?"

"Can Virginia stay the night please, Uncle Hal. Just until tomorrow. It's Friday so it's not a school night and I don't have any homework."

She had not only stolen his usual questions out of his mouth but had answered and handed them back all with her 'no' repellent smile in place.

"Sunny...I have a lot of grading to do. This isn't a good weekend."

"Please, Uncle Hal. We won't bother you, I promise. We'll stay in my room the whole weekend. Don't forget, you owe me."

Hal crossed his arms and smiled. "I knew this would come back to bite me."

"I helped you proofread papers all last weekend, Uncle Hal, remember?"

"You told me you didn't mind helping me."

"I didn't," she admitted, "but this can be my pay for that, right?"

He brought her forehead to his, "You're going to grow up to be an extortionist, Sunny Gurlukovich, you know that?"

She giggled. "Does that mean she can stay the night?"

"Virginia," he looked up at her, "do your parents know you're staying the night?"

"Yes, Mr. Emmerich."

Hal laughed. "You don't have to call me Mr. Emmerich. Hal is fine."

Both girls clambered into the backseat and Virginia caught Hal's eyes in the rear view mirror.

"So, I should call you Mr. Hal then?"

"No. Just Hal. Without the mister."

"Oh, okay." She looked at Sunny, "You were right. Your uncle is cool for a grown-up."

"You should meet Dave. That's Uncle Hal's best friend. He used to live with us but he moved out a few months ago. Why _did_ Dave move out?" she asked him in sudden curiosity.

They were stuck in their usual flow of traffic and Hal stared at the car that had pulled out in front of him harder than he had to to buy a few seconds with the question.

"Well, sometimes people who have been friends as long as Dave and I have need to live their lives...apart for a while." He joined her gaze in the rear view mirror, "But, I actually saw Dave today. He sat in on my afternoon class."

"How is he? Did he say anything about moving back in?"

Hal purposefully only answered her first question. "You know Dave. He never changes all that much. Still a man of few words."

Sunny and Virginia immediately leaped out upon the car's stop in their driveway and ran into the house while Hal gathered his things from the back seat. When he leaned up, he felt a hard pain in his head that made him think he had hit it on the car but he couldn't recall hearing the necessary thump to go with it. He dropped his bag near the doorway and knocked at Sunny's door.

"Hey, you think you girls could maybe keep it down for a while? I'm going to be laying down for a bit. Will you wake me up in about an hour, Sunny?"

"Sure, Uncle Hal. Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I just got a bit of a headache."

He was understating it and in fact, the pain worsened in the short walk from Sunny's doorway to his own bedroom across the hall. He closed his eyes to shut out the light from his window and soon, his world throbbed into blackness.

**...**

"Uncle Hal? Are you there? Uncle Hal, what's wrong?"

Hal's view of the toy electronic megaphone came into focus before the speaker did and he lightly swatted it down to reveal her face and smiled.

"Who's idea was that stupid toy?"

She raised it to her mouth again. "Yours, Uncle Hal."

He took it out of her grasp when he pulled her onto the bed with him, giggling and laughing from his attacking of a few well known tickle areas around her stomach area and under arms.

"So, what do you Virginia want for dinner?" he asked her, watching the clock roll to 7:54.

"Virginia's not here. She went home earlier."

"What? Is she okay? Was she sick or something?"

Sunny frowned. "No. It's Saturday evening. You slept almost the entire time she was here."

"What? Sunny, I told you to wake me up! You know I can't afford to sleep that long. Why didn't you wake me?" As he asked her, he realized the megaphone hadn't been for her amusement after all.

"I tried to. I shook you like crazy but you wouldn't wake up. Are you sure you're feeling okay?"

He didn't know the answer to that himself even though for all it was worth at the moment, his headache was gone. He smiled and ran his hand over the top of her short hair. "Yeah, I'm okay now. I guess this whole teaching thing is making me more exhausted than I thought it would." He suddenly sat up. "Oh no, my papers. I haven't even started grading them yet. I'm going to be so far behind..."

"Don't worry, Uncle Hal," she offered right on cue to stop his impending panic, "I'll help you."


	2. Chapter 2

_"What do you mean you have to leave for a while? When will you be back?"_

_"I'm not coming back. We can't live together anymore, Hal."_

_"You can't be serious. Dave, we both should just calm down and talk about this. No one has to move out--"_

_"Don't you understand? I can't stay here!"_

_"Just like that? We've been friends for 10 years! We've gotten through much worst than this! Would you please just stop and look at me?"_

_"Why would you do this, Hal?"_

_"I'm sorry...but I had to tell you. You had to know! Please, don't leave. Dave! DAVE!!"_

**...**

The words passing in front of him had started to meld together and barely make sense for Hal as he peeled off one more layer of the stack of papers and placed it into the 'graded' pile. He was barely reading them anymore and instead, his attention was being entertained by the flicker of hate he had seen flash in Dave's eyes right before he exited their front door for the last time. It played over and over again with an unusual clarity he didn't enjoy having months after it had originally happened. That half a second he could see Dave's despise of him had hurt more than anything—more than the confession had, more than the fear had, more than the imminent and inevitable end of their friendship had.

He had just added another paper to the stack when Sunny approached him and put another paper into his view.

"What's this, Uncle Hal?"

He checked the top of it.

"Oh, that's Milea Stewart's work." he said once he saw the name and handwriting, "She can get a little radical sometimes. Just leave that up here. I'll get hers."

"No, look closer."

He truly didn't know what he was looking for as he scanned over the lines of text until Sunny pin pointed it.

"You see. Right there. She used a three instead of an 'e,'" She moved her finger down. "And right here. She used a four instead of an 'a'. The ones are i's, the b's are sixes, the s's are fives, the o's are zeros. She did this through her entire paper."

"This is strange for even her." he confessed.

"Does she know Dave?" Sunny asked.

"Well, I really can't think of a reason why she would. What does that have to do with this?"

She carefully went over the paper and circled in pencil the first seven numbers that were hiding in the words on her paper.

"3...5...1...4...6...0...1. I don't think that's a coincidence. That's Dave's cell phone number."

* * *

Milea watched Hal through dark sunglasses from the back of the lecture hall, not taking notes or even pretending to be interested in what he was saying for his sake. When he had dismissed his class, she raised slower from her chair than the rest of the bodies and was already taking a leisurely stroll toward the small office off the side of the stage by the time he expressed his need to speak with her.

"You wanted to see me, Professor Emmerich?"

He gestured to a chair before he began to reshuffle through his papers.

"I didn't give you back a paper today, Ms. Stewart, because, by my own fault, it got ruined. I was wondering if you could print me off another copy. I can add a few points for your troubles."

"No trouble at all. Anything else?" She asked in boredom rather than real curiosity.

He looked up at her and sighed. "Do you have to wear the sunglasses when you come to my class, Ms. Stewart? They cover so much of your face and I don't like not being able to see your eyes."

She smiled. "Maybe I don't have any eyes."

"Well, I'd still like to see the holes in your head where your eyes are supposed to be. It might be nice to see your natural hair color every now and then, too."

She stroked a long lock of her pearl white hair that fell over her shoulder and nearly caught under her arm. "There's nothing wrong with my hair. Maybe there's something wrong in way you're looking at it. And there's not a rule against wearing sunglasses on campus. No matter how much of your face they cover."

She crossed her arms under her breasts in self contentment in the silence Hal used to smooth over his growing annoyance with her.

"I have one more thing I want to discuss with you." He slid the paper of hers Sunny had decoded, "What's this?"

"It's my paper."

"I don't appreciate your smart remarks, Ms. Stewart."

She grabbed it off the desk and entered the information into the reflection of the large lenses on her face.

"I don't see anything wrong with it."

"I don't find this the least bit funny or amusing. Substituting letters with numbers, inserting elements my personal life as your little message. I could have you expelled for this!"

"Then do it, Professor Emmerich!" she challenged. When he shrunk back, she smirked and shook her head with her silent defeat over him.

He took a deep breath through his mouth and lowered his gaze to the desk, "You have two days to redo it. You don't and you take an 'F'. It's that simple."

"How about I have it back to you in a day, Professor E? I wouldn't dream of making you give me a bad grade. I know how much you'd just hate that." Hal couldn't stand the feeling of having Milea in his head and tried everything to shake her out as she sashayed out of his door.

But it was too late. He knew she was already there.

* * *

"Sunny!"

Hal was responding in the same urgent volume her voice had came to him and snapped him out of sleep in. He ran across the section of hallway between their rooms and rushed into hers.

Nothing.

"Sunny, where are you!"

She screamed for him again, so sharply and violently that it perfectly echoed the howling storm's lighting and thunder stomping and stabbing outside of the windows he passed by in search for her. He rounded the corner into the living room and searched quickly before he was pulled to the front door to open it.

Hal wasn't sure what he saw in front of him and just as he could begin to devote a first thought to it, a flash of lightning illuminated his front yard which was being occupied by a single, giant tree with a car tightly smashed into the trunk of it.

His car.

He thought to check the wreckage for Sunny but as he slowly approached it and all the stray parts of metal springing out in complete rebellion of where they had once been, he realized he couldn't. He couldn't see her tiny body disfigured and mangled into the mayhem of metal and just the thought of it made his legs feel like ribbons beneath him. When he was close enough to reach out and touch it, he did so and was immediately brought to his knees by the familiar pain in his head, only it felt like it was riping out nerve endings instead of just throbbing. When Sunny's cry returned to the air, he was on the ground, unable to move or think of anything pass killing the fuse that made his head feel like it was going to explode. The pain grew heavy and soon, Hal's body hopelessly locked in place on the cement. He felt like he was retching inside the strict confinements of his own skin and pulling apart the very fibers that held him together.

He forced his eyes to open when he felt a tiny, warm hand land on his face.

"It's okay, Uncle Hal, Dave and I are here now. We're not going to let anything happen to you."

"Sunny..." He wanted to reach up and place his hand on hers but he felt like he couldn't remember how to move and every attempt ended in failure before it ever really began.

He could feel the tiny pricks of rain on his face and at random times, see them being back lit by the lighting still stirring in the sky above them. One of those flashes later, Sunny's face washed out of his vision-

-and reappeared in sunlight.

"Uncle Hal?"

Hal moved only his eyes around. The walls of his room were surrounding him again and the covers of his bed were draped over him, completely undisturbed. The sunlight coming in through was a beautiful golden that bounced off of Sunny's skin and her warm brown morning wheat eyes.

"Uncle Hal," she repeated, "Are you okay?"

His body wasn't in pain anymore and as soon as he realized this, he suddenly lunged an embrace around Sunny and landed kisses wherever on her face he could.

"I was so scared when I couldn't find you and you were yelling for me. I'm so happy you're okay."

"What are you talking about? I've always been okay. It's you I'm worried about."

"You were calling for me last night and I swear, I was coming to you but I couldn't find you--"

"Uncle Hal," she pulled back from him, "I wasn't calling for you last night."

"But...but I heard you. You were screaming like you were hurt or in trouble."

Sunny simply shook her head with melancholy for the soul in front of her, which made him feel crazier than having her call him that would have. "I think you were sleepwalking. I found you lying on the front lawn a few hours ago."

"The front lawn!" He shot past her and ran the route that led him to the front door. But when he opened it, there was nothing short of a beautiful day in front of him, nothing of the horror he had seen before. He turned to Sunny as she caught up with him.

"Where is it?!"

"Where's what?"

"The tree with the car—_my car_—crashed into the trunk of it. Where is it?"

"Your car is right over there and it's fine."

Hal looked over in their driveway for Sunny's sake and even when he saw his Corolla untouched, shook his head.

"That's _not_ my car. It can't be. It was completely destroyed! I saw it!" He stepped over the threshold of the door and went to the area of yard the wreckage had been and combed through a few blades of grass. "Where's the debris from the broken windows and all the twisted metal? Even if someone moved it, there should be fragments left of it here!"

Sunny hugged around him as much as her arms could take in and let a few calming breaths pass from her to him.

"Uncle Hal, let's just go back inside. You need to go back to bed."

"Dave is here!" He looked up at her to check her expression. At least something he had said had been right. "You told me last night, right out here when it was raining and storming. You said, 'Dave and I are here now. We're not going to let anything happen to you.'"

"I called Dave this morning after I found you outside. I didn't know know what else to do. He came over and carried you back into the house but...I never said any of that." She hooked under his arm and rose him off the ground from his knees. "Come on, Uncle Hal. You need to rest."

* * *

"Rough night?"

Hal didn't say anything and only stared into the cup of black coffee Dave had put in front of him on the table. Dave sat down across from him. "I don't think you're crazy, Hal. I think you're just stressed out. You're teaching a class now and raising Sunny...I have no idea how you do it all, honestly."

"And honestly, I'm surprised you even noticed."

Dave frowned. "That's not fair--"

"You want to know what's not fair, Dave?" he asked, his pain almost coming out in misplaced laughs, "My best friend up and bolting right when I needed him the most. _That_ is what's not fair."

"I don't expect you to understand why I did what I did. What do you want me to do to?"

"Tell me you don't think I'm the most vile, repulsive thing on Earth."

"I don't think that, Hal. I never have. You know that."

"Sometimes, I'm not so sure." He looked away from him. "You make me feel like I'm...like I'm goddamn contagious, Dave. Like I'm carrying around some disease that I should be quarantined with."

"I don't think we should talk about this right now. You're already under a lot of stress."

"You know what? You're exactly right," he agreed. "Why don't you leave?"

"What?"

"Leave, Dave." He clarified sharply. "You're so good at it."

"Hal--"

"Or do you need some motivation again?" Hal got up and leaned his face down into Dave's, hooking his eyes so intensely into them that Dave's next scheduled breath halted dead in his chest.

"I'm gay. Does that make you want to run? Does that make you want to leave again?"

"If that's what you want, Hal."

Dave slowly backed out his chair from under Hal's gaze and left the dining room. Hal felt sick to this stomach but didn't allow himself to sit down until he heard Dave's truck speed down the street. He knew Sunny would want to know what happened, why Dave had gone in such a rush. He was sure that everything that happened Sunny blamed him for anyway. He knew he was the bad guy. He even felt like it sometimes himself. Sunny was just too nice to say it.

He went into the kitchen and poured a glass of water when that sick feeling in his stomach produced a few coughs that caught in the back of his throat. He tried to drown the hacking with a few long sips but his body rejected it harshly and sent the liquid back out of his mouth. When he went to wipe his mouth, he realized there was more blood on his chin than water. Something in the sight wrestled him to his knees, watching the warm red substance collect into tiny pools on his hands.

Hal stared up from the floor at the lights above him, concentrating on not letting them dim and crunched his hands over his chest when it suddenly became selfish of the air it kept. The lights burned straight into his pupils but his body was in too much of a shock to steady and do something as small as blink. He was a toy winding down, using the last bit of charge to come to a sputtering stop and a sudden, swallowing blackness.

**...**

"If that's what you want, Hal."

Even though Dave's face was completely expressionless, it didn't smooth out a single line cutting into the surface of his skin. It actually almost made them deeper and harder ingrained and Hal knew every one of them personally along with those steely blue eyes that echoed in and out of his view in perfect three second beats. He couldn't help but feel that they both had inhaled that exact air before, in the exact same chest movements. Hal even felt the same burn rolling around in his nostrils, coming off what his heart rate was telling him was the unpleasant draw of his tongue that had put the memory of it there. When he heard the replay of Dave's chair scrape across the tile, he grabbed his arm.

"What's going on?" He asked.

"What?"

Hal looked back at his coffee cup, still in the exact place Dave had sat it seemingly ages ago. "What did I just say to you?"

"You just told me to leave. And that's exactly what I'm doing." He stood only to be pulled back into the chair. "What's the matter with you?"

"There's something happening, Dave."

"What do you mean?"

"I feel like this has happened before..."

"Like deja vu?"

"No, I know what deja vu feels like and this was different." Hal dug his fists into his forehead and when looked like he might rip it off, Dave intervened and squeezed his hand around his shoulder.

"Are you feeling okay?"

"I don't know what's happening to me."

"You're just exhausted, Hal. You need to rest. I'll call the university and tell them you won't be coming in tomorrow."

Hal looked up at him, tears crowding around his eyes.

"Why did you leave, Dave?"

He looked down, still in great avoidance of the question. "I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know? Do you hate me? Do I disgust you? Did you think I'd not be able to control myself and hit on you? Tell me, Dave." he pleaded, "I can handle it. I swear I can..."

Hal suddenly felt his face buried deep in a broad shoulder, warmly tangled to the body in front him by an embrace.

"You're going to be just fine, Hal. I'm going to make sure of it."

* * *

_Hope you've enjoyed part 2 of **Rescape**! I hope you'll continue to read it and see it through to the end. Please be sure to support my friend and fellow author __**Solid Snake's Solider**__ with her beautiful and epic tale __**My Guiding Light**__._ _You won't regret doing so. This is one for the ages, peeps._ _Also, it might be worth mentioning that almost this entire fan fic was inspired by the Keane album "Under the Iron Sea", their beautiful 2006 sophomore release. _


	3. Chapter 3

_I'm starting to feel like this story is going over the heads of the people reading it. I promise this will all start to add up and if after you finish it you're still lost, refer to my profile and I'll provide a full explanation for everything. While I'm a little sad that people aren't digging it the way I hoped, I'm so very happy with the finished product and how it came out. But, as Primus likes to remind us, "They can't all be zingers." Hope the guys who are reading it are enjoying it. The pay off is coming!_

* * *

Hal couldn't pretend like he didn't notice or even more, like it didn't bother him, that the empty chairs in his class were vacant of his male students. Only. He saw Milea smile whenever he'd turn to face his audience and let the all female attendees for that day knock him off his thought process. When he had dismissed everyone, he retreated to his office and Milea not a full minute behind him. When he looked up, she was staring at the framed pictures on the wall.

"She doesn't draw them, she takes them." She said as if she were answering an age old question.

"What?"

"Your little girl. You told the class one time that she created pictures but you never said how. She takes them. She's a little photographer. I like this one the most." She gestured to a black and white print of a beat up pair of shoes sitting alone in the middle of the hallway. It was his favorite as well but he did nothing to give her the satisfaction of knowing that even though she was strangely sincere in her observation. "Who knew footwear could be art?"

"Is there a reason you're in here Ms. Stewart?"

She turned to him. "They all dropped your class. All twenty-one of them."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, Professor Emmerich, don't play stupid and pretend like you didn't notice you were teaching in a sea of estrogen today. Everything with a Y chromosome dropped your class yesterday."

"And why would they drop my class?"

"Because they know you're a fag." She paused. "Or, at least still trying to figure if you're one or just confused." She waved her hand in the same disinterested manner she had suddenly gained for the thought itself. "Well, either way, when all the boys found out, they all opted out of your class. Even took a failing grade for the semester." Hal's body stiffened on the spot which made Milea tilt her head in sick amusement at him. "What's the matter? Cock got your tongue?"

Hal did his best to ignore her comment. "Is that true? Did all my male students drop my class because of..."

"It's as true as anything else in your life has been lately, Professor E."

Hal shook his head with vigorous disbelief. "No, that's not true. It can't be."

"Do you _really_ need proof? You think every guy in your class caught a cold on the exact same day or something?"

"But they can't do that..."

"There's not a rule against it. If they're willing to take the 'F', they can drop any class they want anytime they want."

Hal could feel his self wanting to cringe into the corner of the room and shut down to everything around him but all it found the power to do was land in the seat behind him.

"She'll never love you if she knows who you are." He opened his eyes and saw a thin smirk forming on Milea's face underneath the distorted view of his office being reflected back to him. "That is what you think, right? About Sunny. That if she finds out Uncle Hal is Uncle Homo, she'll want to live with Dave."

"Stop it!" Hal clasped his arms over his ears, feeling like small child in his bedroom, hearing his parents' angry exchanges through his walls.

"She's the only thing you got now, Hal, and if she knows the truth, she'll hate you. Just like Dave does, just like all male students in your class do!"

"STOP!"

He could feel how anxious his heart was to escape the confines of his chest and when he realized he couldn't hear anything but the trapped sound of his own breathing, he looked up again. He was alone and strangely it felt as if he always had been.

* * *

"Say cheese Uncle Hal!"

Before Hal could look up and protest the action to follow, the whine of the Polaroid ejecting its product came into his ears followed by a mischievous little giggle.

"Oh, come on, Sunny. I look like crap. You always catch me at my least human looking."

"Don't say that, Uncle Hal. This one is going to be a good one. You'll see."

"Promise me you'll burn it."

"I can't do that, unfortunately," she said to him, "burning photographs is bad luck. Especially when you're the one who took it."

"Well, I certainly don't need anymore of that."

"What does that mean?"

He unintentionally sighed at the thought. "Things have just been a little hectic at the university is all. Nothing major."

"I'm sorry." She offered to him.

"It's not your fault, sweetheart. You don't have to apologize for other people."

Sunny took her hand and ran the back of it down Hal's cheek. "You haven't shaven for a few days." She leaned her gaze in closer to him, "Or slept. You're lying. What's _really_ happening at the university?" She asked, narrowing her eyes at him in suspicion.

Hal smiled faintly at her but mostly at the way she was so in tuned with how he was feeling. He couldn't possibly tell her what had happened although he was sure she had noticed that she was grading the papers of only female students. Instead, he pulled the little girl onto his lap, wrapped her up immediately in his arms and buried his face into the back of his neck.

"It doesn't matter right now. I have you and that's all that matters."

"Uncle Hal--"

"I love you so much, Sunny." He told her, hugging her closer to him, "Just remember that. No matter what happens, you'll always have me."

"I know, Uncle Hal."

"Look at me," he turned her body to him and brought his hands around her tiny face. "Say it back."

"Say what?"

"That you'll love me no matter and that I'll always have you."

Sunny smiled. "You know that's true, Uncle Hal."

"Sunny, say it!"

Her smile dissolved when she saw the first tears leave Hal's eyes. Her face was trembling in his hands and she reached up and put hers over them to resteady her vision.

"Uncle Hal--"

"Tell me that you'll never stop loving me, Sunny. That nothing, _nothing_ in this world will ever make you want to change that."

In her silence, she could feel Hal's heart starting to break in front of her. She scrambled to know where each tear coming down his face ripped from from inside of him. "Please tell me what's wrong. Why are are you so upset?"

"Sunny, please, just say it."

"I need you to tell me what's wrong."

He dropped his head for a moment, trying to gather himself and get to a part in his sobbing that allowed him to speak again.

"Why can't you say it?" He finally asked.

"Because I don't need to--"

"I need you to! I need to be sure that I'll never lose you!"

"But why?"

"Because I'm afraid..."

"Afraid of what? You don't have to be afraid of anything."

He didn't answer and could only bring his hands over his face to weep into them. Sunny grabbed and held on to him. "It's okay. Don't cry." She lifted his head from her shoulder and ran her hand over his cheeks, taking his tears with them. "I love you Uncle Hal," she told him, "no matter what."

* * *

Hal looked down at his steering wheel as he waited outside the school for Sunny. His eyes still felt too heavy and swollen to lift from crying so much. He was the only one out there, parked in the 'pick up zone' before even the earliest parents could arrive and claim a spot. His class earlier had been a disaster and a little more than fifteen minutes into his attempt to teach with a constant run of tears coming down his face, he told all his girls that they were dismissed for the day. Milea hadn't said anything and had actually filed out of the lecture hall with the rest of them to his surprise.

Soon, the normal buzz and flow of things picked up when the doors of the school propped open, letting the first rush of running students escape from the day. Hal had only programed himself to listen for the passenger side door to open and didn't respond immediately to the female voice that was calling his name. Finally, a hand reached through the window from the driver's window and shook his shoulder.

"Hi, Mr. Emmerich?" She smiled at him when he looked up but the ice that immediately began coursing through his body upon doing that went straight into the muscles in his face. "I'm Ms. Sheers, I'm Sunny's teacher."

He slowly extended his hand to accept hers, wrapping his fingers around the hand of Ms. Sheers-

-but the memory of Emma's.

Hal was slow to let go of her but she didn't seem to notice or care. She was exactly the way he had imagined his sister had she had the chance to get older, with all his modifications to the length of her hair, height, and body shape in place. He couldn't have dreamed her more perfect. She even laughed in the same voice he had picked out for her to have in her late twenties and had played in his mind so many times.

"So _you're_ the famous Uncle Hal. I'm happy I finally caught you. I never see you at any of the PTAs."

"I'm...sorry." There was more that wanted to follow the apology but he couldn't dig it out of his head.

"It's alright. I understand you're busy. Sunny tells me you teach at the university."

"Yes," he said, the answer coming back to him like a lost memory, "Yes, I do. I teach there."

"What do you teach, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Technological Solutions."

"That sounds exciting. And complicated." She added with another one of those laughs.

"It's not. I'm sure you would have loved it."

Ms. Sheers wrinkled her forehead a moment but then smiled again. "Well, I just wanted to come out here and tell you how much I love having Sunny in my class. She's one of my favorite students. I think she's going to grow up to do amazing things." She leaned into the car window and lowered her voice, "Between you and me, Mr. Emmerich,--"

"Call me Hal. Please."

"Between you and me, _Hal_," she said with special care that made him smile, "I feel like I'm holding her back sometimes. She knows the answer to everything before I even say it. Maybe you should think about getting her skipped a few grades or into an advanced second grade class at the least. She's far ahead of me."

"No, I want her to stay with you."

She smiled. "Trust me when I say the departure would be bittersweet. I love your niece but she's a redwood growing in a flower pot with me."

"She loves it in your class and...and I think she'd be happiest with you. She knows you."

Ms. Sheers looked flattered but a little alarmed by Hal's insistence. She looked up just as Sunny was approaching the car and opening the passenger side seat.

"Hi, Ms. Sheers. What are you doing out here?" she asked.

"I was just telling your uncle how much I love having you in my class." she extended her hand to Hal again, "It was great meeting you, Hal."

"Wait! Don't leave! Please."

"Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, I just...I want to know more about you, what you like to do. What's your favorite movie? Are you married?"

Ms. Sheers stepped back from the car as if Hal had suddenly sprouted fangs right before her eyes and when she walked away, Hal leaped out of the car and followed her, maneuvering his way around and across the sea of waist high waves. He called to her but the further the gap between them became, the harder he ran and the easier it became to forget the name she had told him and call her name he wanted her to have.

When he threw open the doors to the school he had seen the woman disappear into, he wasn't in a school at all.

He was back in his office. Unconcerned with his strange change in location, he glanced around the small area and tore out of the door and back into lecture hall to dead silence that fell in between his beating breaths.

"No! No! Emma!"

"She's dead, Hal."

He whipped around and met his own wild eyes in the lenses on Milea's face.

"Where is she? Where's my sister?!" When she was silent, he relinquished control of himself, wrapped her shirt in his fist and smashed her back to the wall. "This is all your fault! You're doing this to me! Tell me where Emma is!"

She didn't flinch and carried her voice like a mother telling her child there was no Santa. "Emma Emmerich died in 2007 during the Big Shell incident from being stabbed by Vamp. She died in your arms, Hal."

"I saw her just now! I followed her here! TELL ME WHERE SHE IS!"

She calmly reached out and placed her hand lightly over his heart. "She's right here."

Hal cried out like she had just tried to steal it clean out his chest. "Don't tell me that! I can't lose her! Not again!" He let go of her and ran back into his small office, tearing the standing bookshelves down off the wall and anything else that he could find that would unhinge from its spot and fly across the room. He finally collapsed to his knees after turning over the desk and soon after felt a hand softly come down on his shoulder.

"Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?" He asked without looking up.

"I'm whoever you want me to be, Hal."

"Are you even real?"

"Is anything?" Though he couldn't see her eyes, he knew she wasn't mocking him this time.

"I'm real. Sunny's real. Dave's real. This university is real. You're the _only_ thing I don't think is!"

"What's the name of this university, Hal?" As quickly as the answer should have sprung from his mind, it didn't. In fact, it wasn't actually there at all. "When was your first day teaching here? What's the address of here or even Sunny's school?"

Hal's mind ran around itself for the answers but they all felt like holes in his memory too deep to retrieve. By the time he noticed the tiny puddles building on the carpet next to him and looked up, the entire room was filling with water falling like rain from ceiling tiles. Milea placed both her hands on his chest.

"What are you doing?"

Her hands sent an electrical jolt through him that he felt rip deep into his very heart.

"What...what the hell was that? Stop that!"

"Your choice is coming, Hal."

"What...what are you talking about?"

"Trust me."

She ran her hand over softly over his face and down to his chest again. The second jolt from her hands sent him to the ground, staring directly up at her, his eyes reflecting the frantic movement that needed to reach his body in order to get away. The more he watched the rain pour down and cover them, the more static ring in his ears crawled into his skull, pushing out anything left him that wanted to fight his moment and his fate in it.

Her hands pressed down a little firmer down on his chest, solid and metallic like cold metal sending an unexplained wave of acceptance over him that made him press his hands over hers to let her feel his drop in resistance and lock in his readiness within himself. He knew it was coming and he simply closed his eyes for this one. He trusted her.

Third jolt.

_Sunny..._-

-to blackness.


	4. Chapter 4

_Wow, what an explosion in glowing reviews this thing has gotten! Thank you very much for all the wonderful words, guys (you know who you are). It means a lot to me. Hope the following installments can live up to some of those reviews! Enjoy part four, my sweets. - Andi _

* * *

There were two conditions Hal Emmerich hated driving in: night and rain. And as luck would have it, he was treading through both of them. The thundering and lighting hadn't started yet but from the warm gusts he had felt whip through his window right before letting it up and way the rain was layering his windshield before his wipers could squeak a set of swipes across them, it was coming. But he'd be home by then and that thought kept his foot on the gas and traveling at his slightly brazen sixty miles per hour down the moonless road. The wheel under his hands felt almost as hesitant as he went taking in some of the turns. They both knew that as a Toyota Corolla she wasn't supposed to be galloping at that steady speed.

Hal's cell phone buzzed across the passenger side seat and then suddenly came to life with sound almost too loud for the concentration he had focused into watching the headlights spill over incoming road and scenery.

"Hello?"

"Uncle Hal! Where are you?"

From her tone, Hal could imagine Sunny, hand on her hip, taking the stance of the tiny adult in her seven year old frame, pressing the oversized cordless phone in their kitchen up to her ear. He smiled. "I'm on my way, sweetheart. I'll be pulling up in the driveway before you know it."

"Well, hurry back. It's raining really hard out there. Dave just got in and said there's a storm passing through."

"Uh, Dave is there?"

"Yeah. He came to get the last of his things."

His heart sunk and despite his efforts, so did his voice. "Oh. Well, ask him to stay there until I can get back, okay? And...and tell him that I really need to talk to him about what I said to him a few nights ago."

"Is Dave mad at you, Uncle Hal? Is that why he's moving out?"

"Sunny...we'll talk about this when I get back home."

"Are you still going to be friends?"

Hal sighed, "Of course, sweetie. We'll always be friends. We just need some time to not live in the same house for a minute, that's all."

"So that means Dave's going to move back in soon."

"That's entirely up to Dave, honey."

"You sound so sad." she observed.

"I'm okay. Look, I'm less than 10 minutes away now. I'm almost to the--" he was interrupted by the phone's quick departure from his hand to the floor.

"Uncle Hal? Are you there? Uncle Hal, what's wrong?" He could still hear Sunny's voice bull horning through the phone's ear piece as he groped the area of floor he thought he heard it thump onto.

"Hello? Sunny?" He said when he finally had it in his grasp again. He looked at the screen. "'Call disconnected.' Great."

The first headlights Hal had seen on the road began to approach him as he punched in the fifth number he needed to connect him back to Sunny. The car suddenly jerked violently and squealed in hard protest to the something that grabbed it from underneath. Hal smashed down on the brakes when he saw his headlights reflect back off the metal railing but the car ignored his attempt to control it and didn't respond, breaking across it anyway.

When the first streak of lightning and crack of thunder started above him, he thought about Sunny. She had just recently realized that it couldn't hurt her and had retired her usual routine in a storm of hiding under the sheets of her bed, closing her eyes to the sharp bursts of white electricity flashbulbing through her windows and flinching with each roar of thunder that soon followed it. But watching it so closely as it displayed it's massive power right in front of him, he felt a strange fear of it grow inside of him. He needed to get to her. He needed to walk into her room, take her in his arms, and hold her until there was nothing left of the storm except puddles littering the front yard and streamlines of water running off the roof and down the gutters, even if it was for his own sake now. The only thing obedient enough to move was his left arm and even its compliance came with a heavy leaded pain that was beginning to take form and throb throughout his entire body. He brought his fingertips to the side of his head. He felt shattered and had to take a moment to remember that he wasn't made out of glass and that the shards of it protruding out of his hair didn't belong there. He felt around more and pulled away a sticky, wet substance that he couldn't find the grace and control in his limbs to even look at.

"I'm coming! Don't move!"

Someone was hurrying toward him, nearly losing footing every few steps down the incline in the muddier sections. The figure finally sloshed to their knees next to him just as he felt his senses fading to their voice.

"Stay with me, sir! Okay? Can you tell me your name?"

It was woman. It was definitely a woman. He caught the smell of her wet, rose flavored skin as she leaned over him to explore his pockets. She finally placed his wallet in the left one and flipped through it. "Hal? Is that your name? Are you Hal Emmerich?"

"Y...y...yes."

"Okay, good, Hal. My name is Milena. Can you say my name for me?"

"Mi...Mi...Milea...."

"That's close enough, hon. I'm just making sure you're staying with me. Listen, okay? I was coming from the opposite way...I saw the whole thing. It wasn't your fault. There's no way you could have avoided it in time."

"I...have to go..." He slowly began to arc his back but the woman carefully intercepted his attempt and laid him back down into the grass.

"Don't try to get up, Hal."

"I...have to get...to her..."

"I understand but if you get up right now, you won't make it very far. You're hurt pretty badly. I called 9-1-1 already and they'll be here soon. Is there anyone else you'd like me to call?" She began to flip through his wallet again. "The 'Call in Case of Emergency' card. Is that up to date?"

"Su...Sunny..."

"Sunny? I don't see a number for a Sunny. There's a cell number for a Dave in here. I'm going to call him." She took the card out of its slot to look at it better. "351...4601. Do you remember if that's still his number?" Without waiting for a response, she took out her cell phone and began punching them in.

His breaths were sinking in his chest, sticking stubbornly to the walls of them and refusing to free in full respirations. He lost much of the girl's features in the shadows being casted over her face from the headlights still burning on her car but her long platinum blonde hair was stripped to a silvery white luminosity in it, one he felt strangely drawn into.

She hung up the phone and turned back to him.

"Hal, your friend, Dave is coming. He's bringing a girl, Sunny. You mentioned her earlier, right? Is she your daughter?" He wanted to smile as a response, as he often did when he was asked that question but he was he struggling enough to keep his focus on her now. He couldn't find her eyes or even where on her face her eyes were supposed to be anymore and though he felt a few light taps on his face, he couldn't honor them and do what they were telling him to do. "Hal...where are you going, honey? You have to stay with me." She frantically reminded him. She took her jacket off and placed it over his chest and any other body part she could drape it over it from the rain and then cleared away a buildup of bloodied water and a few locks of his soaked hair from around his eyes. They were a beautiful, pure blue, an untainted shade she could only imagine seeing when looking at a sapphire cut perfectly in half. "Tell me about your little girl, Hal. How old is she?"

"Seven..."

"Seven, huh? That's an incredible age. I have a daughter too and she just turned nine. Her name is Virginia and one day—you, me, Sunny, and Virginia—we're all going to do something together. That sounds fun, right?"

"Virginia..." The name stuck to his tongue, barely scraping off of it.

"That's right. Her name's Virginia. Maybe we can all go to Candy Mountain Land in the future. Does Sunny like amusement parks?"

"Never..." He lost the rest of it.

"She's never been?" Milena finished for him in exaggerated shock as she checked his pulse via his neck. It was slipping away and so was he. "Well that's just a crime! Then it's settled, we're all going Candy Mountain Land as soon as you're okay. What else does Sunny like to do, Hal?"

"Pictures..."

"Does she like to draw pictures or take pictures?"

He felt the answer to the question drop in his head when he felt the suction of his surroundings falling into a black hole. Milena's voice called to him over and over again in faint echoes until the shrilling cries of a little girl he couldn't get to in the distance with his name attached to her pain and tears drug him back into awareness. Hal moved underneath Milena's hands—slight but concentrated and connected to the little girl.

"Sunny..." He couldn't hear himself but Melina had.

"Is that her? Is that your little girl?"

"Sunny..." He was sure the rush of hot streams out the corners of his eyes were tears but when Milena reached over to whip them away, all he saw was a crimson splash on her hand. Milena looked behind her just in time to make a sudden plan to catch the little girl running towards the body on the ground. She screamed and fought wildly in her arms but Milena held firm until the figure that was chasing behind her caught up and accepted her back.

"Don't get away from me like! I wanted you to wait in the car--"

"Wait!" Milena said and called both their attention to Hal. His eyes were close with his lips slightly parted, pushing out tearful pleas that got lost too deeply in the beating rain for Dave and Sunny's ears. Milena stroked his face in an attempt to console him but finally looked back at Sunny. "He's calling for Sunny. Come here, sweetheart." She grabbed the little girl's hand and placed it on Hal's face. "Let him know you're here. That both of you are."

Sunny imitated the the soft passes over his face and conversation she had seen Milena do while she got up and walked to Dave.

"What happened?" He asked her immediately.

She looked back at Sunny and Hal and walked a few yards away, signaling for him to follow her.

"There was an abandoned tire in Hal's lane. It all happened so quickly, I didn't even have time to blow my horn to warn him. He hit it, broke the guard rail, struck that tree over there," she pointed to her right to Hal's smashed Corolla still impacted into the trunk of it, "and went through the windshield. He's lucky to still be breathing right now."

"Where's the ambulance? Did you call them?"

"They were the first people I called. They're on their way."

"What the hell is taking them so long? Shouldn't they be here already?"

"This road is a long way from town but they'll be here soon." Milena placed a hand on the stranger. "Are you okay?"

"No, I'm not okay," he said, flinching her off, "I know he's just some random soul to you that you happened to be passing and was moral enough to help by but that's my best friend and to Sunny, he's the closest thing to family she has."

"I understand--"

"No you don't," he shot back, "You couldn't possibly."

"Don't think I don't have any emotional involvement in this. I watched him, you know," she reminded him, planting her palm over her chest. "I watched his car go sailing off the road and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I may not be feeling the same pain but don't think I'm going to go home and sleep soundly tonight either."

As Dave was lowering his hands down his face, that's when she noticed the large area of charred scare tissue on the left side which contributed largely to the sadness she felt when she looked at him. To her, his eyes felt younger than his hardened expression and asphalt voice suggested he was and she could see the remains of the transformation from a weary man to a weary old man that had taken place too quickly and too severely for his body to stand.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."

"It's okay. You look like you're already fighting your own demons. Plus some."

"Dave!"

The both eyed the commotion on the ground in back of them.

"What's happening to him? He was fine and the he just started coughing up blood." Sunny said as they approached.

"He might be bleeding internally." Milena grabbed his face to get his attention, "Hal, can you breathe?"

He managed to shake his head in the midst of the coughing worsening and the sounds of his chest becoming even more hollow and sunken in. Milena turned to Sunny.

"There's a beach towel in the backseat of my car. The doors should be unlocked. Go get it! Hurry!"

"What are you going to do?" Dave asked, his normal collected coolness going right out the window at the sight of his friend's suffering.

"We have to do something until help gets here. He's coughing up a lot of blood...and if he continues to lay on his back, he could choke."

Dave could see the life draining out through Hal's eyes in the short bursts of hyperventilated breaths his lungs tore out of his body. When Sunny returned with the towel and Milena summoned Dave to help her, that was when he realized he couldn't move and that something was stealing the breaths from his own body.

"Dave, move your ass! I need your help!" Milena demanded of him, much in the way he remembered being ordered by the female drill sergeants in his boot camp days. He finally broke his feet from their spot and took position next to Hal.

"Help me put this around his neck. As a brace." She was already starting the task as she was telling him what it was. Dave followed her lead and helped lift Hal's back off the ground and prop him into her hold.

"You're going to be just fine, Hal," Dave said, passing his hand over more blood than skin on his friend's face, "I'm going make sure of it." He located Hal's hand and enclosed it in his. He wanted Hal to know he wasn't going anywhere this time.

Milena looked up and had to push down a smile when she heard sirens engulf the night air, steadily getting closer. She stood with Sunny and Dave, watching as the paramedics worked and quickly moved Hal to the road and placed him safely behind the doors of the ambulance.

The younger, chiseled faced female approached them, already predicting from Dave's anxious nature that he was the one she needed to be talking to but she addressed them all collectively anyway.

"I don't know who's family and who's not here but whoever can fill out the paperwork at the hospital needs to follow behind us."

Dave didn't exchange a single word or glance with anyone. He wrapped his hand around the first part of Sunny's arm he could get in his grip around and ordered her to keep in time with him and his quick steps back to the car. He didn't know any words that could pin down the untamed fear ripping at his insides but they didn't matter.

The only thing that mattered was Hal.

* * *

_How's THAT for a mindfu*k, eh? Anyone got any idea what's happening? I'd love to hear your guesses!_


	5. Chapter 5

The hands on a clock only move forward.

That's what Dave realized as he stared down at his watch, watching his time slip by and feeling Hal's slip away. He thought about cracking the faceplate and manually moving the hands backward but he knew that when he looked up, he'd still be exactly where he was: In a cold hospital waiting room with the only remembrance of warmth and love stretched across two chairs in an uncomfortable but sound sleep. He knew exactly where in the past he needed the hands to stop—the moment right before Hal said _it_. Before he fully worked out the wording to start the sentence, but after he drew back the strings of breath and shot it into the atmosphere. He could catch him in an embrace right after Hal said, 'I'm scared and I don't know what this means' and say the words he hadn't been soundly or established enough mentally to say the first time: 'You don't have to be scared. It's okay.'

"You need some help carrying that guilt or are you too stubborn to ask for it?"

Dave looked back and blinked a few times to let the imprint of the face of his watch burn off his retinas. He felt an unexplained sense of relief go through him at the sight of the still complete stranger.

"Milena...what are you doing here? It's 2:11 in the morning," he said without needing a glance to his watch to confirm it.

She lowered a Styrofoam cup into his hand that he could tell was coffee before he ever bothered to look inside of it. "I told you I wasn't going to sleep tonight. I went home, changed clothes, promised my babysitter a small fortune in overtime and came back here. I would have been here sooner but I stay in the next town over so it's a bit of a drive." She sat in the chair next to him, fingers wrapped around her own cup, "How is he?"

"In surgery still. Fourth hour."

"Now, how are _you_?"

He felt as if he had been asked a trick question as he honestly spent a few seconds trying to figure out if that had an answer or not. When couldn't find one, he looked at her. "I don't know."

"It's okay to not know," she assured him softly, hoping to cushion the disappointment in himself she had in his face.

He concentrated a few extra blinks at her, something she had said earlier finally registering, "Babysitter?"

She smiled. "Yeah. I have a daughter named Virginia. She's around Sunny's age, actually. She's the beautiful gift from a horrible relationship." She crossed her legs and leaned into Dave, "So, what about that guilt you're toting around?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You look the way the asshole who put that tire in the road should."

"I guess I just keep thinking about the last conversation Hal and I had."

"Did you guys have a fight or something?"

"Something like that. Forget it," he added flatly, coming into his senses. "I have no idea why I'm even telling you this."

"Sometimes it's easier to tell a stranger what's troubling you than it is a friend. After tonight, we'll probably never see each other again, Dave. Think of it as...writing it down on a sheet of paper and burning it."

Dave looked to his left at Sunny to make sure she was still the last way he had seen her, asleep. He sighed and lowered his voice. "A few nights ago, Hal came into my room in the middle of the night and woke me up. I thought something was wrong with Sunny at first but then he told me he really needed to talk to me and that he had just found the courage to do so. He must have paced around the living room for twenty minutes before he looked at me and told me that he had feelings for me. He said he didn't know what that meant about his sexuality but that it had been haunting him for months. He made me promise not to tell Sunny a word about what he had told me. He was terrified of her not accepting him that way and hating him for it."

"That little girl could never hate him." Milena chimed on a beat.

"I know...and I wish I would have told him that instead reacting the way I did." He paused and stared down at the floor. "I told him I couldn't live in the same house with him anymore. Hal was devastated and I could hear him begging me just talk to him as I was packing a bag to leave but I ignored him, like he suddenly was nothing to me. The last thing I said to him before I left was, 'Why would you do this, Hal?', like it was his fault that he was feeling that way or that I was freaking out about it." He sighed, "I got a hotel room that night but I couldn't sleep. I just watched my cell phone ring all night, knowing it was Hal on the other end trying to apologize for something that wasn't even his fault.

"I turned my back on him. And I know I'm not always the best person to him but I've never done _that_ before. He's never once asked for my sympathies or understanding for anything in his life and the one time he needs me more than anything to tell him that it's okay to have those feelings and that it won't change our friendship or that Sunny won't hate him, I walk away and confirm every fear he had about coming out in the first place."

"Perhaps, in some ways, you were just as scared as Hal was."

He shook his head. "I'm not allowed to get scared, Milena." He was talking like the mercenary still inside of him, the one who carried the lives of millions on his every move.

"Well, that's absolutely ridiculous. You're human, Dave. You're allowed to have moments in your life where you're unsure or afraid or that you're not the proudest of. Look, no one actively prepares themselves for bombshells and no one knows how they're going to react to having one dropped on them until it happens. I'm not saying what you did was okay or right but it's understandable and most importantly, it's fixable."

He looked at her sincerely, for the first time bothering to study the woman's face. He knew she assumed he had done something civil for a career and had already pegged him down as something of a welder or mechanic in her own mind. He suddenly wanted the part she'd casted him in and began consciously trying to play it with a small smirk he allowed to emerge from his own face. "It's really that easy for you, isn't it?"

"Only when you have the practice of making all the mistakes I have in the past. Nothing's ever as bad as you think it is...you just have to be willing to take the chance to find that out for yourself."

"I've made a lot of mistakes, let a lot of people down."

"Did they tell you that or did you imagine that?"

"Does it matter?"

"Of course it does. You strike me as someone with a very vivid imagination."

He looked to Sunny. "Not with her."

Before Milena could respond, her attention shifted along with Dave's the door that the surgeon entered, immediately catching Dave's eyes and heading over to him.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Marshall, I assisted Dr. Hodges in Hal Emmerich's surgery. You're David, correct?"

"Yes," Dave answered getting the doctor's extended hand in response, one he could tell was not given in preparation for good news.

"Is he okay?" Milena asked.

"Yes," he answered slowly, "He's been moved into recovery."

Dave's stomach didn't unknot from the news. It actually became even more twisted.

"But," the doctor continued, "we're not sure exactly how much recovering Mr. Emmerich is going to do right now."

"What do you mean by that?" Dave asked.

"He sustained a few very serious injuries on impact and from being thrown from his vehicle. He has broken ribs which in turn collapsed one of his lungs and a broken clavicle bone but the things we're the most worried about are the severe head trauma and the ruptured spleen."

"But...he's going to be okay, right? He's just going take a little longer to recover. That's all that means, right?" Dave could feel Milena lightly place her hand on his back in a way that told him that she knew just as much as he did that he was being foolish in his thinking.

Dr. Marshall clasped his hands together and looked down at the floor so that Dave wouldn't read his response in his eyes. "It means...it means you probably want to spend as much time with Hal as you can. You can visit him now if you like but try to make it brief."

Dave stared down the bustling hallway of moving uniforms the doctor disappeared into for a moment until the double doors obscured his view to it.

"I'm so sorry, Dave." Milena offered, her own voice quivering with her attempt to soothe him.

"Why are you apologizing? You saved Hal's life...I ruined it."

"Dave..."

"Could you do me a favor, Milena?"

"Anything."

"Could you take Sunny to see Hal? I know she'd really love to see him." His voice was flat and disengaged despite the sincerity in the suggestion.

"I don't mind but don't you think you should do that?"

Milena knew he had ignored her when he walked away and lightly shook Sunny to alertness to lead her over to her. Though she obediently took the woman's hand when gestured, she kept her eyes on Dave.

"Why aren't you coming with me? Is it because you're mad at Uncle Hal?" She asked.

"I'm not mad at Hal. I promise I'll go in there and see him later but right now, I think he needs to hear from you."

"You're lying! You hate him!"

"Sunny..."

"That's why you left! Why did you do that to him? He's never done anything to you!" Dave looked away from Sunny, fully accepting the accusations in her eyes and perhaps even silently adding his own to help her.

Milena felt the aggression building behind Sunny's words and the pending release of something hurtful riding in the wings. She quickly tugged her grip on her to douse the fuse. "C'mon, sweetie," she said, "He's right. You two can visit Hal together later."

When they got outside of the Hal's room door, Milena suddenly stopped and leaned down to Sunny.

"Honey, I just want to let you know that when you walk in to see your Uncle Hal, he's going to have a lot of...things hooked up to him. But, I don't want you to be scared. Those things aren't hurting him, they're helping him."

The little girl nodded bravely and let Milena open the door and was a little surprised when she actually felt her hand being squeezed in slight astonishment. They both traveled slowly into the room, guided by the beeps, hums, and other sounds all in rhythm coming from the machines around him. Sunny took the first step to his bedside and took his hand in hers. For a moment, she just held it, gently stroking it, ignoring the wires and tape that she touched in the process.

"You can talk to him, you know," Milena suggested after the machines' beeping got to be too much for her.

"But he can't hear me."

"Oh, honey, that's not true," she said softly, "Just because Hal's eyes aren't open doesn't mean he can't hear you or can't sense what's going on around him. He can even feel you touching him right now."

"I just want you to wake up and be alright, Uncle Hal," Sunny quickly wiped her cheek, "You have to be there when I start school in a few months. You told me you'd be there everyday afterwards to pick me up, no matter what. You promised me that."

"I bet your uncle is an amazing man."

Sunny wiped her cheek again and nodded. "I know he is...but sometimes, I don't think he does."

"What do you mean?"

"I know he feels lost without Dave around anymore. He won't tell me why he moved out but I know that it hurt him and that he tries to pretend it doesn't." She steadied her voice and stared deeply at Hal. "Sometimes, I think I want to hate Dave for him, for what he does to him. He doesn't even know how much he hurts him anymore. One time, Uncle Hal told me that he'd always wanted to teach at a college but when he told Dave, he told him he was too nice to deal with college kids and that they'd run him over within a week. That crushed Uncle Hal and after that, he stopped talking about it. But Dave, he didn't even care. Uncle Hal even took up for him and said that Dave doesn't realize the way he says things sometimes but I think he's just mean."

Milena placed her hands on Sunny's shoulders. "You know, you're very observant for a seven year old and I bet you notice more than Hal or Dave think you do." Sunny looked up at Milena. "Honey, hate isn't a feeling you want to walk around with. It's too ugly and heavy for your small shoulders to carry. I know for a fact that Dave is not happy about how he hurts Hal and he's torturing himself more than you or I or Hal ever could. He may not seem like it but Dave is really lost right now and he's trying to figure out where he's going, just as much as Hal is."

"Really?" Sunny asked, her sympathy for Dave creeping back in.

Milena walked around to face Sunny. "Yep, really. So, just be easy on him, okay?"

If Sunny would have known that Milena was underlyingly trying to prepare her for the possible change in her life that would leave her in Dave's care, she might have screamed instead of agreed so nicely and understandingly to Dave's situation.

Milena noticed Hal's fingers find movement in the tiny hand it was in before the owner of it could. But she couldn't bring herself to smile upon noticing how frantic and anxious the movement was and how slowly the feeling crept through his whole body. The machines feeding from him were the last to receive it and their evenly metered sounds soon sped up to match the feeling.

"Honey, he's okay," Milena said, slowly bringing Sunny to her. She was struggling to turn her face into her stomach, ready to protect her from the blast that was stuck at a tidal wave still in front of them.

_"He's crashing!"_

When Milena looked around again, her and Sunny weren't the only ones in the room anymore. There were so many hands doing different things that she couldn't follow any one pair but they were all working to end the one note chorus resonating over the entire room.

One of the nurses suddenly looked down at Sunny. "Get the girl out of here!"

Milena didn't know if she had been talking to her or one of the other hands working on Hal but she began to tug the little girl towards the door anyway. "Sunny, we have to go. Now!"

_"I'm not getting a pulse!"_

_"_Sunny, NOW!" Milena screamed it this time but it still didn't budge the little girl.

_"Charging..."_

"Uncle Hal! Don't leave me! Listen to me! Don't you leave me!" Milena could feel Sunny pulling away from her own arm socket toward Hal.

_"Clear!" _

Milena wrapped her freehand over Sunny's face which she protested immediately by clawing feverishly to peel each finger of the blindfold off her eyes.

"Sunny!"

_"Nothing. Again! Charging..." _

The second time, Milena wasn't able to shield Sunny's eyes from Hal's body violently arcing and falling back down onto the bed. She screamed and Milena found her hand scrambling to wrap over her mouth this time. Before she could fight it off, she hoisted the the girl up the waist and carried her the required steps to the outside of the door.

"Tell me he's not going to die!" When Milena didn't say anything, Sunny thrust her open hand into her abdomen. "Tell me he's going to be fine!"

She remained silent and Sunny continued to channel her pouring pain and tears onto the body of the woman in front of her.

Milena didn't stop her.


	6. Epilogue

EIGHT MONTHS LATER...

"If it isn't the walking, breathing miracle himself?"

Milena couldn't close the door of her car fast enough once she saw Hal Emmerich standing, smiling, and waiting to greet her.

"I still don't call what I do walking yet. It's more like a shuffle."

She kissed his cheek before she shallowed him in a long awaited hug. One she had been planning on giving him for eight months.

"I don't care what you call it. I'm just happy you're alive to do it. You look incredible, Hal."

"I still can't believe you drove 5 hours just to see me. I must have been pretty charming in those emails we exchanged."

Milena laughed. "Yeah, I guess so." She turned around and waved the dark haired little girl trailing behind her to walk faster. "Hal, this is my daughter, Virginia."

Hal smiled at her and extended his hand. She shifted a little more behind the pillar she had made from her mom's leg and peeked out at him.

"We're working on her being a little more social." Milena told him.

"If she spends enough time around Sunny, she'll be social enough." Hal said.

She looked down at her daughter, "Honey, Hal's little girl, Sunny, is waiting for you inside the house. Why don't you go and introduce yourself?"

She hesitated but went on with a few gentle nudges.

"I was in labor for 16 hours with her," Milena said, looking after the door her daughter had disappeared behind. "She wouldn't have ever come out if the doctors wouldn't have made her."

Hal laughed and motioned to a table and chair set up in the yard with with a fresh pitcher of iced tea sweating in the center.

"It must be nice to live out in the middle of nowhere like this. No city noise or nosy neighbors."

He eased himself down into the chair and declined a request for help when Milena extended her hand. "It's nice. It was a little bit nicer before Dave had to drive 45 minutes in town to take Sunny to school five days a week, though."

"You can't drive yet?"

"I can." Hal looked down at pitcher as he poured the contents into his glass and sat it down. "But I don't."

"Oh."

He looked up at her. "But, Dave doesn't mind. He likes it, really. Gives him and Sunny time to bond. They've become a lot closer over the months."

"What about you and Sunny? How are you guys doing?"

He knew exactly what she was really asking in her tone. "Yes," he answered the underlying question, "I told her. She has a lot of questions and doesn't quite understand why Uncle Hal doesn't like women but," he smiled, "she loves me still and she tells me everyday to make sure I don't forget it. I think it helps that Dave moved back in, too...even if it did take my car wrapping around a tree for him to do so."

Milena shook her head at the table. "Some people buy new cars if they've had a fender bender in them...I can't imagine what seeing yours in a tree does to you."

"Until a few months ago, I couldn't even ride in a car. The therapy is helping. The physical and the psychological."

"So, your shuffle's not permanent."

Hal chuckled. "No, it's not. At least I hope it's not. The brain damage is, though."

Milena's face dropped in mid sip, due more to the way he had included it in passing, like it was the day's weather forecast.

"It's nothing major," he added upon seeing her face, "It's the appendix of brain areas, really. It's nice to have but no one can tell the difference if yours is working or not."

"Hal, this is your brain we're talking about. That's not a part of your body scientists don't know the function of still. It's kind of important that all of it works."

"Yeah, but who uses their subconscious?"

"Is that what got damaged in the accident?"

He nodded. "I don't remember my dreams anymore. Actually, the doctors said I probably don't actually dream at all now. And you know when you listen to the radio and hear that one song you especially hate over and over again and then one day when you hear it, you realize you're singing all the words? I'll probably never do that again either. Everything I commit to memory has to be painfully intentional or it just won't stick. But, the good news is that I can't trigger anything from the accident that I don't remember consciously happening."

"How much do you remember?"

"I remember driving home on a rainy night and my cell phone ringing..." he paused. "The in between stuff is kind of a blur but the last thing I remember clearly is seeing the rail guard and thinking, 'I'm going to die'. Everything else is gone, though."

Milena took a moment to find her voice again. "I'm really sorry, Hal."

"Well, when I sit down and compare reports from you, Sunny, and Dave, I realize it could have been a lot worse. At least the part of my brain that tells me I like guys still works. You can laugh at that by the way." He suggested when she didn't react. "I do."

She looked away from him. "I've never watched anyone flat line before and it didn't make it any easier that you were a complete stranger at the time. It still replays in my mind sometimes, everything from seeing the tire in your lane to hearing Sunny scream for you to not leave her and the only thing that brings me relief is knowing that I didn't have to attend your funeral."

"You know, Milena...I never said thank you."

"You don't have to thank me."

"Yes, I do." He declared firmly. "You could have drove by, you know. Continued on your way home. You weren't obligated to stop and help."

"Even with as much evil as there is in the world, Hal, I truly couldn't imagine anyone just driving by."

"I could." He obviously had someone in particular in mind. He reached for his glass to take a drink but suddenly discarded it on the way up to lips and let it drop to the grass beneath them. He doubled over in the chair, wrapping himself around his right leg.

"Hal, what's happening?"

"Please, let's walk." he said, trying to beat out another surge of pain.

"Do you need me to get Dave or Sunny here?"

"No," he sharply declined, "I just need to walk."

**...**

Milena tightened her hold on Hal's arm once they had taken a few steps off the property.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"What was that back there?"

He laughed a bit stilted, still in possession of some pain. "My body still hasn't forgiven me for it going out of a windshield so, every now and then it takes its revenge and sends these really painful spasms into my legs and arms. When I walk, they go away."

Milena kept her watch on Hal's movements, adjusting her pace to his and leaning her sway in whatever direction she needed to make up for his uneven strides. After a few moments, their rhythm fell into a natural pace.

He looked at her, slightly embarrassed. "I didn't mean to make you play walking assistant on your first visit, Milena."

She patted his arm fondly. "You're fine, Hal. I don't mind."

"One day, it won't be like this." It was the first thing he had said that hadn't been contained in a joke or a poke about his current condition. "I can't do anything without someone holding my arm or explaining something to me fifty times because they think I wasn't paying attention. I make jokes to make it easier to deal with but sometimes there's not a joke in the world that can take me out of this body."

They went about silently for a moment until Milena took a deep breath, "I've been where you are before, Hal." He urged her on with his eyes. "About four years ago, a few of my friends invited me to this private lake for the weekend. Let's just say they all have way too much money and too much time on their hands to learn to do things I can't, like jet ski. But, I decided I was going to try it anyway and after a few practice runs, I started zipping around the lake with them.

"After a few hours, I got a little too comfortable with pushing the speed of it and I didn't realize how much your reaction time decreases going fifty five miles per hour toward another jet ski. The guy riding the other one abandoned ship at the last second when he realized we were going to collide head on. It took my friends twelve minutes to find my body in the water and almost thirty minutes after that to get me to the hospital. After a few days in a coma, a social worker told my parents to start looking into adopting Virginia because even if I did live, I'd be too brain dead to take care of her myself. Twenty-two days later, I just woke up. Both my legs were broken along with my hip, a few ribs, and my neck but I was alive and I still remembered how to walk and talk.

"I was in physical therapy for a year and a half and there were moments when I felt completely useless to Virginia because I couldn't play with her at the park or even pick her up in my arms but I worked and worked and things got better. I still get a little nervous when I have to go in the water and I'd have to be heavily, _heavily_ sedated to even touch a jet ski again but--," She halted the thought along with their pace and looked thoughtfully at Hal, placing his face in her hands. "Choosing to live is the easy part, Hal. It's wanting to continue to do that once everything involved with finding a new normal comes down on you. But you have Sunny and Dave to help you remember that you're going to be just fine. I know it." He nodded softly at her and returned the smile she was giving him. "Now," she said, looking around, "can we turn back around and head back to your property before we end up in Oz?"

Hal glanced around at their surroundings, realizing how far off they were for the first time and laughed. "Yeah. I don't even think I know where we are anymore. We might already _be_ in Oz."

When Milena reached into her pocket and pulled a pair of sunglasses out, Hal found himself strangely intertwined with the way they reflected the sunlight and trees off of them, like a mirror giving the world back a look at itself. When she noticed his fascination, she smiled.

"You don't like them, do you? Virginia doesn't either. She says I look like a bug with them on but I can't help myself."

He reached up and carefully brought them off her face and into his hands and studied his warped, colorless image in them for a long moment before looking up and smiling at Milena.

"No," he answered, sliding them back into place over her eyes. "I love them."

* * *

_Technically, this is the end of the story. Thanks to those who have read this. I'll be posting a full explaination of what you just read in my profile (if you need it) AND the extended ending to this that I wrote for all the people who want more of what happened with Sunny and Dave. Hope you've enjoyed it. - Andi_


	7. Alternate Epilogue

_This is the extended and slightly alternate epilogue to Rescape. I loved it but it was just too much and didn't wrap up the story as nicely and neatly as I needed it to. I knew it was going to end up like that but because I felt a little strange in highlighting the strained relationship between Dave and Sunny during the story and then only devoting a line to it in the epilogue, I went back and wrote this to satisfy that bit of the plot a little more. You'll also notice that Hal's a bit more depressed about his situation in this version. I guess I returned back to my angsty roots. As always, forgive all the grammar and spelling errors. I'm my own editor here!_

_Oh, there's also an alien abduction at the very end._

* * *

EIGHT MONTHS LATER...

"If it isn't the walking, breathing miracle himself?"

Milena couldn't close the door of her car fast enough once she saw Hal Emmerich standing, waiting to greet her.

"I still don't call what I do walking yet. It's more like a shuffle."

She kissed his cheek before she shallowed him in a long awaited hug. One she had been planning on giving him for eight months.

"I don't care what you call it. I'm just happy you're alive to do it. You look incredible, Hal."

"I still can't believe you drove 5 hours just to see me. I must have been pretty charming in those emails we exchanged."

Milena laughed. "Yeah, I guess so." She turned around and waved the dark haired little girl trailing behind her to walk faster. "Hal, this is my daughter, Virginia."

Hal smiled at her and extended his hand. She shifted a little more behind the pillar she had made from her mom's leg and peeked out at him.

"We're working on her being a little more social." Milena told him.

"If she spends enough time around Sunny, she'll be social enough." Hal said. He looked down at Virginia again, "Sunny should be back any second. My friend Dave is picking her up from school but you're welcomed to sit with me and your mother until then."

She looked up at her mother before she allowed a slight nod in response. Hal couldn't keep himself from chuckling. "She's so adorable, Milena."

"When she wants to be."

Hal motioned to a table and chair set up in the yard with with a fresh pitcher of iced tea sweating in the center. Virginia settled herself onto the ground next to her mother while Hal walked around to the other side.

"It must be nice to live out in the middle of nowhere like this. No city noise or nosy neighbors."

Hal eased his self down into the chair and declined a request for help when Milena extended her hand. "It's nice. It was a little bit nicer before Dave had to drive 45 minutes in town to take Sunny to school five days a week, though."

"You can't drive yet?"

"I can." Hal looked down at pitcher as he poured the contents into his glass and sat it down. "But I don't."

"Oh."

He looked up at her. "But, Dave doesn't mind. He likes it, really. It gives him and Sunny time to bond. They've become a lot closer over the months."

Milena smiled. "I'm really happy to hear that."

"Dave's unfortunately always been awkward around kids and Sunny's always sensed that so it's made their relationship odd but interesting in the past. Now, they're almost inseparable." Hal looked down a moment, losing himself with the thought.

"You sound a little sad." Milena pointed out.

"No. It's just...I'm not able to do all the things with Sunny I used to and with her in school now, the only time we really spend together is when she rides with Dave and I into town to the physical therapist's. All she can do is sit there and watch and by the time we're done and riding back, she's usually asleep. I never thought I'd be so anxious for summer vacation to roll around. But," he added with a pick up in his voice, "I'm happy that her and Dave are close. I think he's more than happy he decided to move back in now."

"Don't worry, Hal, you'll be rid of your shuffle and up and around before you know it." Hal knew what Milena was etching into her next breath before she expected him to. She propped her elbows on the table and leaned forward in the chair just enough to exclude her daughter's ears from what she was saying. "I hope I'm not being too intrusive but, did you tell her?"

He nodded. "She took it really well. She has questions sometimes about it, naturally, but for the most part, she treated it as if I told her I didn't like the color green anymore. It didn't really matter to her. Makes me wonder why I was so scared to tell her in the first place..." Hal turned around to the direction he heard Dave's truck pull up in and watched Sunny piggyback a ride from him, clutching a white bag in one of her fists. He worked and detached a red string from around his wrist right before she dismounted and ran into his arms. "I missed you so much, sweetheart." He told her after he had landed what Milena thought could be a year's worth of kisses on her face.

"I was only gone for seven hours, Uncle Hal." she giggled.

"Well, that's seven hours too many! I don't like to be away from you for even seven seconds.

Sunny smiled at the woman across from her. "Hi, Milena!"

She motioned for Sunny to give her a hug and she did so. When they pulled away, Sunny noticed the little girl sitting on the ground, clinging to Milena's leg.

"That's my daughter, Virginia. I'm afraid she's a little shy, though."

Virginia squeaked out a greeting and a slight wave but Sunny gave her a bold smile and offered a hand to help her off the ground. She hesitated but took it.

"Do you like computers, Virginia?" Sunny asked. The little girl nodded with interest. "I have a lot of cool computer programs. Wanna see them?"

"Okay." Without glancing back, she followed Sunny until she stopped and went to Dave. She beckoned him to lean down to her and she gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"Thanks, Dave."

Milena looked after the two girls until they disappeared inside of the house. "If only it would have been possible for Sunny to be there when I was in labor with Virginia for sixteen hours. She might have convinced her to come out a little sooner. I've never seen her take to someone like that." When she looked back at Dave, he was seating himself in the remaining chair under a heavily scrutinizing gaze from Hal.

"What did you buy her?" Hal asked finally.

"Nothing...much."

"You got her the Nikon, didn't you?"

"She gave me the look, okay?", he confessed in the way someone under hot interrogation lights would. "You know the one."

"She gave you a look that made you drop twelve hundred dollars for a camera?"

"She tricked me! She told me she wanted to go into Best Buy to _look_. The next thing I know, I'm walking out with a receipt for thirteen eighty."

Hal passed the numbers through his head. "Wait. That's too much even with tax."

Dave lowered his head and mumbled into his chest, "Maybe she needed an extra battery and memory card."

Hal crossed his arms and shook his head, "You're weak, Dave."

"Well, I for one think it's very sweet how she has you wrapped around her little finger, Dave." Milena said. He kept his head down a bit in embarrassed but not in disagreement. "Seriously," she continued, "I'm happy to see you two so close now."

"She doesn't really like me," he joked, "She just knows I'll cave and buy her stuff."

"Well, she's not suppose to like you until she's older and realizes she needs you for more than a new camera or computer program. You think Virginia likes me? No. She knows I'm the only one dumb enough to run to the store and buy whatever Boyz Attack CDs and merchandise comes out that week. One day, though, when she's older and she's about to have a child of her own, she'll come to me and hopefully I'll say something really great to help get her through that and I'll be supermom." She smiled and sat back in her chair. "But until then, I'm buying bedsheets with 30 year old men on them and I've learned to be okay with that." She looked at Hal, "And I know you've caved into her a few times, Hal." She called his name again when his concentration didn't break from the spot in the air it was set on. After she called to him a few more times, Dave finally reached over and snapped his fingers in front of him, waking him of the trance.

Hal shook off the moment and brought his gaze to Dave with the anticipation of hearing the unwanted results of a test.

"You were doing it again." Dave told him simply.

"I'm sorry."

"It's alright, Hal. I think you're just hungry.." Dave looked at Milena, "You and your daughter will be staying for dinner, right?"

"Sure. Sounds great."

He looked back to Hal, "Did you remember to call Chen's and order the take out earlier?" As soon as Hal's head dropped into his hands, Dave got up and placed his hand on his friend's shoulder. "It's okay. We'll be eating a little late, that's all. I'll go call them."

Hal kept his head in his hands, even after Dave had gone. After a moment, when he removed his glasses, Milena realized he was crying quietly.

"What's wrong, Hal?"

"I can't do anything right."

"Hey, don't talk like that. It's no big deal. We all forget sometimes."

"It is a big deal. It's a very big deal!" He gripped his hair in hands, "God, everything is just so messed up. Nothing's right anymore."

"Because of the accident?"

He nodded and looked up at her. "I didn't even remember you were coming today. Sunny left me sticky notes everywhere—in my bedroom, on the refrigerator, she even programmed my laptop to remind me—and I still didn't remember until you called me saying that you were lost and couldn't find the house.

"Sometimes if I sleep during the day, I don't remember where Sunny is. I'll secretly panic when she's not in her room or not outside and Dave will have to tell me she's at school. And if Dave's not here, I just sit in one spot and cry until it comes back to me that she's okay." He picked up the string that had been around his wrist earlier and twirled it around his fingers. "I wear this to try and help me remember when she's away. It works as long as I remember to take it off when she comes back. It was Dave's idea."

"I had no idea, Hal."

"The doctors said that the impact from hitting the tree partially damaged the part of my brain that controls memory—conscious and subconscious. I don't remember my dreams or process anything that happens subconsciously in addition to having trouble remembering things. They said it could be a temporary and heal over time but I know they're just saying that to not discourage me." Hal quickly dried his eyes, put on his glasses, and put on a smile when he realized Sunny was running towards him and Milena.

"Dave sent me out here to come get you guys. He just ordered from the restaurant. They'll be here in about forty minutes. But, they usually can't find the house so Dave said to give them about an hour."

"We'll be along in just a second, honey."

"Do you need help coming in, Uncle Hal?"

"No, I'm fine. I can make it."

"Everything's going to be okay," Milena assured him after Sunny had moved out of earshot.

"I tell myself that everyday," he said, still looking after his little girl, "and it seems it loses meaning everytime I do."

Milena walked over to him and lightly pulled at his arm away from the chair. "What are you doing?"

"Before we go in, we're going for a walk, Hal Emmerich."

**...**

She didn't know where they were going and Hal didn't ask. They both let the silence carry them away from the evening sunset and in silent rebellion against the let the chilly winds that angrily tried to blow them back into the direction they came from. Milena brought Hal in closer to her by the arm she had firmly in her possession.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I don't think I get what you're doing though."

Milena kept her watch on Hal's movements, adjusting her pace to his and leaning her sway in whatever direction she needed to make up for his uneven strides. After a few moments, their rhythm fell into a natural pace over the stretches of yellow leaved covered ground passing underneath them. She finally sighed the beginning to a thought, "I've been where you are before, Hal."

He looked at her. She was still looking ahead, almost as if she hadn't said anything. "What do you mean?"

"About four years ago, a few of my friends invited me to this private lake for the weekend. Let's just say they all have way too much money and too much time on their hands to learn to do things I can't, like jet ski. But, I decided I was going to try it anyway and after a few practice runs, I started zipping around the lake with them.

"After a few hours, I got a little comfortable with pushing the speed of it and I didn't realize how much your reaction time decreases going fifty five miles per hour toward another jet ski. The guy riding it abandoned ship at the last second when he realized we were going to collide head on. It took my friends twelve minutes to find my body in the water and almost thirty minutes after that to get me to the hospital. After a few days in a coma, a social worker told my parents to start looking into adopting Virginia because even if I did live, I'd be too brain dead to take care of her myself. Twenty-two days later, I just woke up. Both my legs were broken along with my hip, a few ribs, and my neck but I was alive and I still remembered how to walk and talk.

"I was in physical therapy for a year and a half and there were moments when I felt completely useless to Virginia because I couldn't play with her at the park or even pick her up in my arms but I worked and worked and things got better. I still get a little nervous when I have to go in the water and I'd have to be heavily, _heavily_ sedated to even touch a jet ski again but--," She halted the thought along with their pace and looked thoughtfully at Hal, placing his face in her hands. "Choosing to live is the easy part, Hal. It's wanting to continue to do that once everything involved with finding a new normal comes down on you. But you have Sunny and Dave to help you remember that you're going to be just fine. I know it." He nodded softly at her and smiled. "Now," she said, looking around, "let's turn back around and head back to your property before we end up in Oz?"

Hal glanced around at their surroundings, realizing how far off they were for the first time and laughed. "Yeah. I don't even think I know where we are anymore. We might already _be_ in Oz."

When Milena reached into her pocket and pulled a pair of sunglasses out, Hal found himself strangely intertwined with the way they reflected the sunlight and trees off of them, like a mirror giving the world back a look at itself. When she noticed his fascination, she smiled.

"You don't like them, do you? Virginia doesn't either. She says I look like a bug with them on but I can't help myself."

He reached up and carefully brought them off her face and into his hands and studied his warped, colorless image in them for a long moment before looking up and smiling at Milena.

"No," he answered, sliding them back into place over her eyes. "I love them."

* * *

_Okay, there's no alien abduction but I don't think too many people read this anyway so, it doesn't matter, does it? :)_ _Until next time. - Andi_


End file.
